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Sunday, April 08, 2018

India's Crisis

In India, economic reforms were implemented in the 1990s. Since then, there has been an unprecedented creation of wealth in the country. According to Credit Suisse, since 2000, there has been an increase in the value of 9.9 per cent annually in India, while its global average has been only six per cent. But its

benefits have not been found in the large population of the country. Despite India’s share in global assets (sixth), the average assets of Indians are much lower than the global average. Meanwhile, inequality has expanded in the distribution of public resources and nearly one-third of the population is still forced to live below the poverty line. The condition is that India has slipped to the 100th place in the Global Hunger Index of 2017, and in this case, Bangladesh, Sri Lanka, Myanmar and many African countries perform better than India, while we were at 97th in 2016.

According to Oxfam, only one per cent of the people on the global level have only 50 per cent wealth. But this figure stands at 58 per cent in India and 57 billionaires have assets equal to 70 per cent of the country’s population. According to another report from Oxfam, ‘The Widening Gaps: India Inequality Report 2018’, economic inequality in India is increasing rapidly. In the country’s GDP, 15 per cent of the wealth is made, while the share was 10 per cent five years ago.

The gap between the rich and the poor has increased alarmingly. According to data from the Economic Cooperation and Development Organisation, the number of young unemployed is very high. This is causing a feeling of dissatisfaction in the society. Similarly, in spite of all efforts, the participation of women in the total labour force is only 27 per cent (in the labour force, household work and care, such as unpaid work is not included). Latest estimates from the World Bank show that in the period from 2004-05 to 2011-12, 19.6 per cent of the women moved out of labour force which is a major drop. The importance of women’s involvement in labour force can be understood in such a way that the International Monetary Fund estimates that if the presence of women in India’s labour force becomes as much as that of men, then it will help in increasing our GDP by 27 per cent.'

The agricultural sector’s contribution to GDP is around 13 per cent, but still half of India’s population depends on agriculture. On the one hand, the agricultural sector is not able to bear this pressure.